Report summarising experiences at
the ISPRS Mid-term Symposium of
Technical Commission VII in Istanbul,
Turkey
Commission III Midterm symposium
on Photogrammetric
Computer Vision (PCV), ETH Zurich
2014]
Charity Mundava
Department of Spatial Sciences
Curtin University
Perth, Western Australia
My name is Charity Mundava and I am a PhD student within the Department of Spatial Sciences at
Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. My PhD project is focused on developing tools that can
be used for Above Ground Biomass assessment using remote sensing for the Kimberley rangeland
area in the Northern part of the state of Western Australia. I would like to share my recent
experiences at the ISPRS Mid-term Symposium of ISPRS Technical Commission VII. The Mid-term
Symposium of ISPRS Technical Commission VII took place at the Istanbul Technical University from
29 September to 2 October 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is a very rich historical city where Asia
meets Europe with a lot of diversity (Plate 1). It was such a great opportunity to visit this lovely city.
The title of the paper I submitted was 'Evaluation of vegetation indices for rangeland biomass
estimation in the Kimberley area of Western Australia. The report is split into four parts: 1) a brief
introduction, 2) a detailed summary of the symposium, 3) social events and 4) acknowledgements.
Plate 1: Overview of the Istanbul city with a view of the Bosphorus
The Symposium
The symposium was running under the banner of “Thematic Processing, Modeling and Analysis of
Remotely Sensed Data”. It was opened with a welcome to country from Prof. Filiz Sunar who was
also the symposium chair. During the opening session the two winners of the travel grants were
presented with the awards, these were Chia-Hsiang Yang and myself (Plate 2). The conference was
an excellent occasion for knowledge exchange, exploration and discussion with researchers from all
over the globe on topics related to the advances of remote sensing, computer vision, image analysis
and related fields. Summaries of the different sessions and my experiences are given below:
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Plate 2: Receiving the ISPRS Foundation travel grants from Christian Heipke
Plenary session
The plenary sessions had speeches from internationally recognised keynote speakers such as
Wofgang Wagner (Vienna University of Technology), Deren Li (Wuhan University) Christina Heipke
(Leibniz University, Hannover), Jixian Zhang (Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping) and
Malcom Taberner (Plymouth Marine Laboratory) among many others. The plenary sessions were an
eye opener and gave me an overview of the directions of future research in remote sensing.
Oral session
The technical programme was organised into different parallel sessions covering topics such as
Image classification, LIDAR, Change detection, Hyperspectral data, Data fusion, Crop monitoring and
Physical modelling and Signatures. Sitting in and listening to colleagues give their presentations gave
me an overview of what they are doing and also inspired new ideas for my own work. There was an
opportunity for me to give an oral presentation. The talk helped me gain confidence in articulating
my research to a wider audience, a skill which is very necessary as a researcher. One of the main
highlights for me was attending the White Elephant session. The topics covered during the session
were how to write a thesis/paper, how to write a proposal and how to give presentations. Even
though I have gone to many sessions that are offered by my university covering these topics, it was
quite interesting to hear perspectives from researchers who have had a lot of experience in the field.
I learnt a lot from their hands on experience.
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Poster session
The poster session went well. It gave me a quick update of the current research from colleagues and
I had a chance to strike conversations with the researchers as well as exchanging ideas.
Social Events
Besides the talks, there was a possibility of networking during coffee breaks, poster sessions and
social events, I had a chance of catching up with old and new colleagues from around the globe
(Plate 3). We exchanged emails and had some laughs on our research journeys to date. I have
managed to keep contact with most of them, hopefully these will be lifelong networks.
Plate 3: Networking dinner with colleagues from the conference clockwise from left Shengye Jin, Kyoto University-Japan,
Farhan Sfak, Karachi University-Pakistan, Mustafa Ustuner-Yildiz Technical University-Turkey, Kamil Faisal, Ryenson
University-Canada, myself, Tessio Novack, Technical University of Munich- Germany and Peter Fischer, The German
Aerospace Center-DLR-Germany
Acknowledgements
Attending the conference was a professionally rewarding experience for me, it enabled me to form
new networks that I would have unlikely made. My participation at this symposium was made
possible through a travel grant from the ISPRS foundation including additional support from Curtin
University Postgraduate Student Association for which I am grateful. I also acknowledge the
organisers of this conference, the pick-up and drop off to the airport was appreciated and the
conference went smoothly.
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